At the slightest hint of a bear in the backyard, most of us would slam the front door and lock it immediately. Maybe, from behind the safe confines of a durable doorway, you’d yell or gently reason with it to go away. Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin apparently was bolder in dealing with the wildlife, and he ended up getting chased around his backyard, barefoot, by four of those very bears.

According to Shumlin’s account to the Burlington Free Press, on Wednesday night he heard bears outside his home scrounging for food in his birdfeeders and yelled at them using (in a particularly apt phrase), his “strongest Vermonter” to shoo them off. He then ventured outside and took some of the feeders away from where the bears were. That’s when, it seems, the trouble came. Local newspaper Lebanon Valley News reports:

Shumlin said he went outside again, and found a bear more aggressive then he expected.

“The (bear) charges me on the porch — I’m tearing through the door. You almost lost the governor,” Shumlin joked. “Security was not there. I was within three feet of getting ‘arrrh.'”

“Arrh” seems as good as expression as any when it comes to being this close from getting mauled by a bear. The Free Press noted that Shumlin “wasn’t exactly dressed” for the confrontation. “Real Vermont boys don’t wear pajamas,” the Governor said to the paper.